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Fortune Magazine On Google Growing Up
prostoalex writes "Fortune Magazine runs a pretty long story on Google, but instead of the usual exultation over PageRank algorithm and Larry-and-Sergey biographies, we get a different message - is Google growing up, and is trouble brewing at Google? Here's Fortune's description of the pre-IPO days: 'Google has grown arrogant, making some of its executives as frustrating to deal with in negotiations as AOL's cowboy salesmen during the bubble. It has grown so fast that employees and business partners are often confused about who does what. A rise of stock- and option-stoked greed is creating rifts within the company. Employees carp that Google is morphing in strange and nerve-racking ways.'"
Also, anyone else noticed that Google itself is getting less effective lately? Some searches I make, the first 2 pages all go to the same advertiser's site except all the links have different domain names; I think they're figuring out how to exploit its page ranking. Other searches I get tons of 404s, especially with image search, and the images aren't cached except as thumbnails so it's even more annoying.
I think Google has something very important. It is now almost a generic name now for searching. I know a lot of computer illiterate people who have heard of Google, and have no idea that there are other search engines out there, and that google IS the internet's search engine. As long as people hold on to the association of the word "Google" with "searching" they will have no problem.
Summary of the article: /might/ be doomed.
.com bubble survivors, who survived /because/ they were different.
"Oh no, there's this company here that values engineers highly, and does all sorts of wacky non-corporate stuff. How can they survive ?
They must behave more like other dot-com companies, otherwise they
"
All in all an odd article, since google is one of the few prospering
Nope.
Believe it or not, there are some applications that CANNOT BE EFFECTIVELY OPEN SOURCED.
Open sourcing a search engine would 100% guarantee absolute junk for results.
If I had access to the code behind PageRank, I could guarantee my clients get excellent pacement. Same with other people. Honest people who just put up a website/page would be left in the dust by spammers.
Other examples where obscurity is the ONLY security:
1. Code that states/federal revenue services use to flag accounts for audits. This code, in the public, would instantly destroy the revenue stream of the government. Accountants with programming skills could determine *exactly* what limits they could test and get away with. Every return filed would be for the maximum amount that the code would allow without triggering and audit.
2. Fraud detection code used by credit companies, service providers, etc. Armed with this code crackers would have free reign over credit cards and online payment systems. Exact patterns of usuage could be setup to guarantee that fraud flags would not be triggered.
3. Code that determines which passengers get flagged for pre-flight searches. Armed with this information criminals could fashion profiles that guarantee they will not be probed in-depth.
These four examples destroy your silly notion. Open Source is not a magic pill. A truly open source version of Google would be a useless tool within a matter of weeks, if not days.
For those of you who hadn't heard -- Google recently blew minds in the advertisng scene by being voted the most recognized brand in the WORLD -- over Coke, GM, BMW, FedEx, IBM, Microsoft, you name it.
the voters were senior advertising execs. perhaps you saw this news earlier this year. it was truly a shocker to the usual suspects (the suits), as Google accomplished this amazing feat in just a few years and with virtually ZERO bucks spent on advertising.
The idea that businesses are "run" is somewhat of a illusion. In fact, businesses run themselves once they get beyond a basic size, and they follow rules (like Zipf's law) which (appear to)govern their size and market position.
Of course a business has a culture, and this affects the way it works, but a culture is like a strategy: theft, honesty, quality, exploitation... all choices made in order to improve the odds of winning at what is always a gamble.
No surprise that as Google gets larger, its culture would change: it is entering new domains, needs to adapt, has many new people, each with their ideas and influence.
The "give the customer what they want" culture is very strong at Google, and is the reason for their success up to now. But it is only a successful strategy when it makes a difference. When Google find themselves needing to defend a captive market (of advertisers), fight off hostile intruders (like Microsoft), and change its definition of "customer" (from people doing the searches to people placing adverts), it will also change as a company. This is what is happening now.
Zipf's Law is fun, BTW. It explains the relationship between size and power, in summary it states that in a self-adjusting system, power is balanced out at all levels. I.e. in a market, the largest business will be about twice as large as the two second-largest businesses, about three times as large as the next three businesses, and so on.
The same kind of organic maths applies to cities, earthquakes, and natural languages.
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I know I don't bother with many links these days - whats the point when I can use google to search for it, the open directory to find by category (or even on the odd occaision Yahoo). Even if I am looking for something similar I don't even have to web crawl for it - you can just Show Similar to find it.
I stating the assumption that others are also doing this - and if this is so, then won't the ability of page rank and similar link "usefulness" evaluation algorithims to produce good results degrade?
Any thoughts....?
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I'm surprised that no one has pointed out a pattern I see here in these 100 incidents:
000) About 2 months ago Microsoft executive Jim Allchin said condescendingly: "Google's a very nice system, but compared to my vision, it's pathetic."
001) Microsoft may have offered to buy Google right before it is set to go public, but Google turns them down.
010) Google changes it's program in an attempt to get better weighted results and gets bad press from business about it.
011) Word "leaks out" that SCO may be planning to sue Google for not paying them the "license" tax.
100) Fortune publishes a negative article about Google's management.
All this happens just as Google is about to offer it's IPO and just as M$ is starting it's own online search engine. Tons of negative press for Google, lots of praise for M$'s "forward thinking" on search technology. Coincidence? I think not...
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